Drawing Reference Link
A drawing is a type of CAD document. CAD documents of type, "Drawing" are termed derived engineering drawings. A derived engineering drawing is a drawing created in your CAD application, whose views, parameters, dimensions are associatively extracted from the 3D model file(s). It can have a required reference link to a 3D model, in the case that it cannot be fully retrieved without the model information.
The link between a drawing CAD document and its 3D model CAD document has the following characteristics:
• It is a "reference" link from the derived drawing to the 3D model.
• It has the description: Drawing Model.
• The system allows you to create more than one drawing link from a drawing to one or more models (for example, a drawing can be derived from two models).
• The drawing link is used to collect drawings using the common collection tools (Include Drawings and Exclude Drawings).
• It is a required link
For example, in NX, your administrator defines via a server-side preference how the CAD Adapter determines if the model should be created as type Drawing. The options are as follows:
• By Attribute (default)
• By Layer
• By File Name
As with all supported NX files, the file extension for a drawing is .PRT. If the drawing is derived from a model, then the model can be referred to by the drawing in two ways:
• The model may be the “Master Model” for this .PRT
• The model may have been “assembled” to this .PRT using > > .
In both cases, when an NX model is determined to be a drawing, its assembled children and the master model should be related to the drawing in Windchill using the Drawing Reference link. The child of a drawing reference link may be of the following types:
• .PRT – CAD document type, CAD part
• .PRT – CAD document type, assembly
• .PRT – CAD document type, drawing
For more information, see
Defining NX Drawings.